Critical Autonomous Language Learning: The Politics Of Learning Words On Your Own Terms

Abstract

The academic literature on autonomous language learning (ALL) reveals scholars’ great enthusiasm for the revolutionary potential of learner autonomy as well as pessimism due to its continual depoliticization within higher education. Similarly to how “learner autonomy” is today an unfinished construct that raises confusion among scholars, a theory of learner autonomy that accounts for its political implications remains largely unexplored in the field of language learning—hence, yet to be fully articulated. This doctoral thesis, entitled Critical autonomous language learning: The politics of learning words on your own terms, is grounded in Critical Theory and comprises a compendium of three research articles. Its main objective is to develop a comprehensive critical theory of ALL. This critical theory of ALL entails an in-depth exploration of the history, politics, and philosophy of ALL, questioning dominant educational narratives while also providing clarity on our political objectives and potential avenues for political action. In doing so, it aims to drive educational reform and advocate for formal language education systems that better support student-centered and emancipatory methodologies. The first article offers a critical genealogy of institutionalized language education, unveiling the structural and material factors that limit methodological innovation and constrain the development of learner autonomy and lifelong learning. The second article develops a coherent and nuanced theoretical framework for the critical practice of learner autonomy in higher education. Results show how the field of language learning is dominated by uncritical and apolitical approaches that render learner autonomy a politically impotent practice, and advocates for a critically aware and politically active approach to ALL: one that raises students’ awareness of structural and discursive constraints on their autonomy, drives educational reform and social change, while also maximizing both institutional support and student control. Finally, the third article offers a first-ever detailed exploration of language selfimmersion as both a novel self-directed learning approach and a social phenomenon, contextualized within its historical and political context. Furthermore, this article examines the liberating potential of ALL outside institutionalized education, exploring the problematic implications of online self-learning and content-based autonomous language immersion. In sum, this compendium of articles stands as a coherent and in-depth exploration of autonomous language learning, its politics, philosophy, and methodology: providing (1) a critically aware analysis of the origins and evolution of ALL throughout history [its past], (2) solutions to major gaps in the literature [its present] and (3), a coherent framework for the radicalization and promotion of learner autonomy [its future].